Gaia’s Hidden Gems
Contemplating the Fragile Beauty of Life.
Genesis.
All the pots of seedlings for my son’s garden and veggie patch have been delivered for planting out. The LED garden now looks rather sparse. You can see that I only use fabric pots — they don’t break when I drop them. It’s now time for cleaning the trays and doing some minor re-organisation.
The other LED garden has my next crop of vegetables sprouting. I grow everything from seed, but the vanilla vine is another story altogether.
My Much Loved Vanilla Vine.
One fine day my daughter asked if I had any “good” vanilla for next Saturday’s ice cream. I thought about it and on impulse I bought a cutting of a vanilla vine from a commercial nursery specialising in fruit trees. Just to avoid some minor daughterly remarks, I also went out bought some expensive vanilla pods. I believe in encouraging children especially where homemade ice cream is concerned.
The vanilla vine cutting came by courier. I planted it in the fabric pot to the left and back of the picture, this was in mid-2018. I didn’t really know what to expect. It seemed to me that given my level of gardening knowledge and lack of experience that not much would happen, apart from withering! Now, in 2022 the vine is around 25 metres long according to my son, the diligent gardener.
I was surprised by the aerial roots (as you suspect, I didn’t do much research on vanilla vines before purchase). These roots help to support the vine and grow downwards to seek soil for water and nutrients. I provided fabric pots of orchard mix enriched with a slow release sea-weed fertiliser for the roots. There are now three pots for the roots.
This last Sunday I decided to do some cleaning before starting on the next batch of seedlings. I had a wonderful surprise.
Gaia’s Hidden Gem
This fabric pot for the vanilla vine roots can be just seen on the left of the main picture at the rear. When I moved the rosemary to do a light cleaning I saw this beautiful little fern growing through the base of the fabric pot. If you know the name of the fern, please let me know.
I was joyful, but feared disturbing it. I’m reminded of the film, Jurassic Park and the comment “Life finds a way”. This pot dates from early 2019 and I have been topping up with fertiliser and ding daily watering ever since. I cleaned the tray last October, I didn’t notice little fern then. I will be adding larger pots this year and I think I will just cut the base of this fabric pot and plant the fern in a larger pot. If you have some suggestions, please let me know!
My lesson from the perspective of Gaia.
Gaia is the self-regulating system made up of the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere, all tightly coupled as an evolving system. Gaia has the goal of the regulation of Earth’s surface conditions so as always to be as favourable as possible for contemporary life.
My thoughts from the perspective of Gaia is that the conditions created by the fabric pot, organic orchard potting mix, fertiliser and watering produced an ideal micro-environment for the fern. The interactions between this micro-ecosystem and the LED garden were most favourable for the young fern.
Where did the fern’s spores originate? The spores could have been in the potting mix and were washed to the base of the fabric pot by my daily watering over time. Another possibility is that the spores originated from the organic sea weed fertiliser. I guess the fern’s spores could have come from other plants in the LED gardens born on the gentle breeze from the humidifier. Finally, the spores could have been on my clothes, or blown in from the outside. I’ll never know, but that doesn’t matter. Life finds a way.
Gaia’s gift.
The little fern is Gaia’s gift. I marvel at it’s beauty, tenacity and fragility. I have enjoyed thinking and writing this story. Truly, it has been wonderful and instructive in meditating upon Gaia and the fern.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about the little fern. Blessed be.
